One of the congregations I served as an interim minister included in their values statements the commitment to “honor uncertainty and ambiguity in the search for truth, meaning, and equity.” Given my usual response to uncertainty and ambiguity, namely to try and...

  As our culture became increasingly polarized, we began to hear how we gravitate towards sources of information that will confirm what we already believe, how we prefer like-minded people and like-minded news networks and like-minded online commentaries. The...

  Trappist monk Thomas Merton suggests that each one of us is a word, a particular word that is present in us at birth and stays with us all our lives. That echoes the comment made about clergy, namely that each minister has one sermon they preach over and over,...

  As I read news and watched video footage of the destruction hurricane Helene inflicted on western North Carolina, I frequently heard myself saying, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” A natural human response, a way of expressing relief, and a reminder of...

You may not remember. You may have intentionally forgotten. But this blessing remembers And it refuses to forget Not in order to torment or shame you But to keep your heart open Whenever you see another standing outside the door Hoping to be let in Or standing outside...

After my former husband had accompanied me to Texas to meet my family of origin, he observed, “You’re a fine argument for the theory that the stork brings babies, because you must have been simply dropped into that family.  You have nothing in common with them.” ...

When this blessing knocks at your door You will not want to let it in. Quite the contrary: You will pretend not to hear it. If it keeps knocking, You will tell it to get lost. Blessings that come without warning Seldom turn out to be real blessings But more often...

More and more, I find that in order to navigate my days with a measure of patience, I have to screen out quite a lot:  avoid too much hearing and reading the latest news, stay focused and ignore noise around me when I try to write, turn away from yard signs that too...

I grew up in a church tradition that told us each Sunday how hopelessly depraved and sinful we were, with no possibility for being anything other than sinful unless we went through a specific kind of salvation experience taught by that tradition.  By the time I...

A line of peace might appear if we restructured the sentence our lives are making, revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses . . . from “Making Peace” by Denise Levertov We wake these days to the distressing news of a new...